Defining Love
by Gamemakers
Summary: After all, what single definition could possibly encompass such a spectrum? Includes Hayffie, Everlark, Clato, and Odesta.
1. Myocardial Infarction

_Myocardial Infarction: a sudden and sometimes fatal occurrence of coronary thrombosis._

"Disappointed I'm not dead, sweetheart?"

She could kill him right now, really she could. Or kiss him, but she pushed that possibility away before it could create a highly unfortunate choice. "I wanted nothing of the sort."

"So you would miss me." The man was in the hospital on doctor-ordered bedrest and paler than she'd ever seen him. How could he still manage to be so infuriating? Or, more importantly, how had she become such a terrible person that she wanted to throttle a man who'd had a heart attack not twenty-four hours prior?

"I was just worried about what it would do to Katniss and Peeta, with a baby on the way and all."

Haymitch gave her that little smirk-smile that she always wanted to wipe off his face with her fist. "Just admit it, sweetheart. We both know you love me."

"You almost died seventeen hours ago. You have no right to be this infuriating again already." She had picked her new manicure to pieces worrying about him on the train ride over here. He could have at least bothered to say hello when she walked in the door. But no, she couldn't expect a little bit of dignity or manners when it came to Haymitch Abernathy, could she?

 _He could have died._ She knew that, of course, she'd worried about it the entire way here, but only now, sitting in Twelve's antiseptic white hospital with him did she realize just what that would have meant. Each and every one of Effie's organs seemed to flip themselves upside down at the thought. She had to force herself to keep breathing. Neither Peeta and Katniss nor the hospital staff would want to deal with a case of hysterics.

"Still here, Trinket?"

Belatedly, she realized that she'd missed whatever he'd said. "Of course. I didn't come all the way out here for nothing."

"I was just saying that I always thought it'd be my liver that got me." In that moment, Haymitch looked so much older than she'd ever seen him. Defeated.

"That does seem like a reasonable assumption." _Come on, Haymitch, you've still got some fight left in you. Don't leave me all alone here._

"Yeah." He paused for a moment, and for once, she didn't feel any need to fill the silence between them with insults. "Y'know, almost dying's made me think a lot."

 _About what?_ "Well, that's quite a change."

One edge of his mouth quirked up at that. "I've been thinking how I've been all alone for so damn long, and how that ain't gonna end if I don't change something."

 _You always have me._ She didn't say anything, though, just reached out and patted his hand. "You're tired, Haymitch, and you need rest. We can talk more when you're feeling better."

"That suggests that there will be a time that I feel better."

There had to be some serious pain meds in his system right now; he'd never remember the kiss she pressed to his forehead as she pushed him down further into his bed. At least, that's what she told herself. "I'll come see you tomorrow. We'll see how you feel then." Effie lowered the lights and smiled at him one last time as she left the room, closing the door behind her. No matter what the man said, he really did need his rest.

His words were muffled by the door, but she could still make them out clearly. "Told you you liked me."

* * *

 **A/N:** This will be a collection of seven oneshots, each centered around a different Hunger Games relationship and a definition for the Shipping Week challenge on Caesar's Palace.


	2. Gravitation

_Gravitation - movement, or a tendency to move, toward a center of attractive force._

After weeks of working not twenty feet away from her, he still can't quite place her accent. It's strange; Two has attracted quite a mix of people since the rebellion, but none of them talk quite like she does. The almost-nonexistent r's, the cadence, the slight lilt, all of it is so evocative of _something,_ and Gale doesn't know why he's become so intent on discovering exactly what that something is.

According to her, she's from Eight. Though Poppy (short for Poplin, she says, but he doubts it's her real name) has everyone else fooled, he doesn't believe it. Gale sits a bit closer to her during lunch, finds himself listening through the thin walls that separate the labs as she goes about her usual work day. The eavesdropping (technically illegal as everyone here is working on confidential government projects, but that's never bothered him) mostly goes over his head, as he's always been more interested in the mechanical side of things rather than the particle physics she studies, but it's an interesting exercise.

Interesting enough, in fact, that he starts to wonder if it's the things she says or the way she says them that keep bringing him back for more. He'll be the first to admit he can be a stubborn bastard, but even to him, figuring out where some woman who works in the same building's really from isn't worth the effort he's put in. But still, Gale finds himself pulled in again and again. She's got some kind of hold on him, and she doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon (not that he wants her to).

If he's going to put up with this, he might as well have her world spinning the wrong way as well. He's been pleasant, friendly, an all-around nice guy, but now it's time for something more. "How have you been settling into Two?" (Not the most creative bait, he'll admit, but he's never set a snare for a woman before. He'll see how this works and make modifications for a later date if necessary. Experimentation and refinement are both necessary steps of the scientific method.)

She smiles at him, and when she does that, he can't help but smile back. "I'm settling in really well, thanks. Everyone here is so welcoming."

"Have you been to Glory Field yet? It's real beautiful up there." He hates that a bit of Twelve still creeps into his voice when he's nervous. He's lived here for almost ten years; he's one of Two's most respected engineers now, not some Twelve hick.

Poppy shakes her head. "I haven't even heard of it."

"It's on the side of a mountain, and there's this beautiful, grassy field with all sorts of flowers that you can see all of the district from. I'm going up there tomorrow after work if you're interested in coming along." Gale stutters through his description and hopes it's enough to convince her. (Waiting's always the hardest part, isn't it?)

"I'd love to. It sounds gorgeous."

(He didn't expect it to get this far, but he won't complain.) "Glad to hear it. Leave from here at five?"

"Wonderful."

* * *

Glory Field is beautiful. The bombing of the Nut left a wide, flat ridge along the once-steep slope of the mountainside, and over the past decade, the field has become home to a rainbow of wildflowers. "It's incredible," are her first words upon seeing it, and he feels a surge of pride. (He created Glory Field, and she thinks it's beautiful. Therefore, by transitivity, she thinks he's beautiful. It's a circuitous kind of logic, but he likes the conclusion.)

As they wander through the flowers, picking the exceptionally pretty blossoms, he fills her in on the history of the field. As he reaches the end, she becomes less and less interested in the blooms. "So," she says, "this is a graveyard."

He's never thought of it that way, but yes, he supposes that's one way of interpreting it. "It's not a monument or anything. They were all fighting for the Capitol."

"So their deaths should be forgotten?"

There's a real anger to her words, and he can't help but get defensive. (Looking back on that moment later, he should have known that he was wading in dangerous waters.) "We need to honor our heroes, not the people who killed them."

"And who says that our heroes are the same?" _Oh._ It all makes sense now: the accent, lying that she was from Eight, the anger… how could he have been so blind? (Sometimes, it's not so much blindness as not wanting to see what's immediately in front of you.)

"I have no use for Capitol heroes."

"And I have no use for murdering slime like you."

In a way, he's glad they're even. (But it doesn't make the drive back any less uncomfortable, and being even doesn't make him wonder any less about what could have been.)


	3. Phantasmagoria

**A/N:** Contains some very mild sexual content, violence, and gore, as well as possible mental illness triggers.

* * *

 _Phantasmagoria - a sequence of real or imaginary images like those seen in a dream._

His position now reads as a study in opposites. Peeta rests with his back against cool sheets, but there is a warm body pressed to his chest. The open curtains allow daylight to stream into their bedroom, but with her hair spilling down around them, he's bathed in shadow. Her lips are everywhere: his face, his hands, his chest, but when he tries to capture them for a kiss, he never finds them. Instead, Peeta contents himself with caressing her back and whispering encouragement. An _I love you_ escapes when she does something particularly clever with her tongue.

Katniss pulls away and pushes herself up on her elbows so their eyes meet. "I love you too." This time, when he pulls her down for a kiss, she lets him. Her lips are soft, but her hands are tight on his arms. Too tight. Her nails are breaking the skin now, and a torrent of warm, thick blood is dribbling down his arms.

Peeta's breath catches in his chest. _No, it's just Katniss. Calm down._ He hasn't had an attack like this in years; now's no time to go back to that mess.

But the she-devil has him trapped beneath her, and she's tearing at his lips with her teeth, ready to devour him. _It's Katniss, it's okay –_ he pushes her off of him, and as she tumbles to the floor, he stands, ready to defend himself again. He can taste blood where she bit him.

"Peeta, what's wrong?" His mind is rational just long enough to notice that she seems more stunned than scared.

That all changes an instant later. She rises, ready to attack again, he's sure, but instead, the creature lurches towards the door. It sprints, still nude, down the hall towards the stairs. He's safe for now, but that doesn't mean the creature won't return again.

 _No, Katniss._ Peeta's knees buckle as he realizes what he's done, and he collapses back onto the bed. Still, the images won't let him be, and a part of him still wants to chase after her and ensure that she will never pose a threat to him again. He needs to barricade himself in here so that he can't hurt her. No, he needs to stay far, far away from her, where she'll never have to be afraid of him again.

 _This could have happened while the kids were home._ That thought hurts worse than any physical blow, and it makes up his mind for him. He won't have a chance to say goodbye to them, but maybe that's for the best.

Peeta picks up the phone from where it sits on his nightstand, lodged in the space between a photo of him and Katniss on their wedding day and the construction paper and orange crayon _We love you, Daddy_ card he'd received from Willow and Rye on his birthday. Even a decade after he last used it, the number's ingrained in his memory, and he hardly has to think as he dials it with shaking fingers, his eyes never leaving those pictures.

It takes two rings for the office to pick up. "Hello, it's Doctor –"

"Aurelius, it's Peeta. I need you to take me away from my family."


	4. Uncountable Set

_Uncountable Set – an infinite set with a cardinality greater than that of the set of all natural numbers._

A life is a construction of an infinite number of instants grouped into moments and ordered by time into a single, unified whole. When he breaks it down like that, it all sounds very simple.

But defining the problem is just the first step towards finding a solution. By his definition, he still has a lifetime left to live, but he's missing the purpose that is supposed to make it worth living. As much as he would have doubted it in his younger days, there's only so long a man can stand to stare at a computer screen or circuit board.

Solitary confinement is supposed to be lonely, and Beetee understood that, at least in some hypothetical sense, when he agreed to his punishment, but he did not expect it to be unbearable. He'd been so sure that with the work to keep him occupied, the sentence would seem little different from the years he's already spent hunched over various keyboards and lab equipment. There's a key element missing from those earlier pursuits. From a scientific standpoint, having someone with you in the lab to bounce ideas off of and double-check your work was invaluable. On a personal level, he loved having her nearby. Even on those days when he chose not to talk and her mind wandered far away from District Three, he hadn't realized how much he treasured his time with Wiress until she was gone forever.

Gale had made a poor replacement, but silence is even worse. Some days, he still finds himself turning to talk to her, already talking in the shorthand they've developed over the years that doesn't make any sense to anyone who's halfway sane. But that's fine, because both of them are mad in their own way, and nobody outside their little bubble of asylum needs to understand what they're saying anyway. They can figure out how to tell everyone else about what they've found later.

Or at least that's how it used to be. Now, he needs to communicate improvements to the rest of the world in order to keep justifying his existence. Beetee takes off his glasses and sets them next to the keyboard. In this particular room, even the _click_ of wire rims against the metal table seems deafening. Still, he deserves nothing better. Despite what he'd seen in Twelve, Gale was naïve; he didn't realize the potential his traps had. Beetee should have known better, should have thought twice before sharing all their ideas with Coin. Looking back, all of it would have been so easily avoided, but knowing that now doesn't save two hundred and thirteen children's lives. And so Beetee had agreed to take what would have been Gale's punishment for him, for he carries far more guilt than the boy.

"Wiress, what am I still doing here?" He doesn't expect an answer, not really, but he likes the idea of having her in here with him.

His words echo a little bit through the cell, and if he closes his eyes, it's easy enough to imagine she's sitting right there beside him, a little too lost in wherever it is she goes to respond, but present in her own perfect way.


	5. Postpartum Depression

_Postpartum Depression - depression suffered by a mother following childbirth, typically arising from the combination of hormonal changes, psychological adjustment to motherhood, and fatigue._

The baby's crying again. She should go comfort him, just like she should stop thinking him as the baby and start thinking of him as the tiny little Ronan person, but she's a terrible mother, so she doesn't. Instead, Annie tucks her knees a bit closer to her chest and keeps staring out the window. Finnick will take care of him eventually, just as he always does. It's almost high tide now, which means she's been here for hours. The baby's still crying, and though there's a kind of rhythm to his shrieks, it doesn't match those of the waves, and she wants it to stop and leave her alone to listen.

"Shh, shh." Compared to Finnick, she looks like an even worse parent. "Hey, little guy, what's wrong?" Pause for scooping the baby out of the crib, little wet noises for kisses. They'd agreed before the birth that she would stay home for a few months, maybe a year, to do those kinds of things, but eleven weeks in, he still hadn't set foot on a fishing boat. "Hungry, huh? Let's see if we can find Mommy."

She turns on her smile as they come into the room, and Finnick beams back at her. They say that new mothers have a kind of glow around them, and maybe he's soaked hers up, because even though there are seemingly permanent dark circles under his eyes, he's been radiant since the moment Ronan came home from the hospital. "He's inherited his father's love of mid-afternoon snacks, I see," she says as she unsnaps her top and Finnick passes her the baby.

Finnick laughs and sits down next to her. "You're okay?" he asks, putting an arm around her shoulder.

Annie looks down at their son and thinks for a moment before nodding. "I think I'm getting there."

"I know you heard him earlier." _And you didn't do anything._ She can fill in the accusation herself.

"I knew you were going to get him."

He lets those words hang in the air between them for a minute, and they're cold and callous and indifferent and not at all what she wants to be. Annie can't bear to look at him, so she focuses Ronan's face. His hair already looks like Finnick's, and his eyes have settled to the same shade of green as Finnick's as well. If the baby has any luck, he got his father's mind too, because hers will just fall apart on him.

"Why don't you just come out and say that I'm a horrible mother?" She didn't realize she was going to say it until the words were already out of her mouth.

Finnick looks at her, stunned. "I –"

"We both know it's true, so why don't you tell me to call Dr. Aurelius or see if I can't find someone else who will help me do better? No, since that won't work, why don't you just tell me to go away and leave you and Ronan? You'd be happier without me." Now that she's started, she can't seem to stop. The baby's far too young to be able to understand what's being said, but she still feels bad admitting her real feelings in front of him.

"I didn't want to make it seem like I didn't like taking care of Ronan."

Already, her anger's almost gone. She's too tired to feel much of anything these days. "It's fine."

"No, it's not, and we need to do better." Annie raises an eyebrow and stares at him. "And yes, I do mean both of us. We need to get the help that our family needs to stay functioning."

She has to wonder how they got so bad that merely functioning is a goal to aspire to.


	6. Nostalgia

_Nostalgia - a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations._

Effie's been nagging at him for ages to go through the shit in the guest bedrooms. She says it "tells people he doesn't want company." Well, that sounds about right, but he still somehow ended up in here, staring at a mess of boxes that haven't been moved in decades. Damn it.

He eyes them as he takes a swig from his flask, setting it on the nightstand when he's finished. He's going to need easy access to it later, he's sure. All right, no more procrastinating. He can't keep dawdling if he ever hopes to finish. Haymitch picks one of the boxes at random and drops it onto the bed, coughing when a dust cloud erupts around him. He should go through it and check there's nothing he wants in there before he carries it downstairs to toss everything else. Then he'll have to repeat with the maybe twenty or so boxes left. "Shit, it's gonna be a long afternoon."

Well, at least this box is going to be real easy to pick through. All it has is a bunch of shit that he doesn't know why he bothered keeping in the first place. Nice china – well, he might keep one or two of those cups, his other stuff is chipped – and silverware, some clothes he probably hasn't been able to squeeze into in fifteen years. Yeah, that can all go. Progress.

The next box is more of the same, with one glaring exception. At first, he's not sure why he had bothered to pack the dried wildflower, which is so delicate now that a petal falls off when he lifts it from its spot. It's browned to the point where he can no longer identify the type, and his first instinct is to throw it away like the rest of the trash he's found today. But when he looks at it more closely, the memories start coming back.

 _He had felt a little guilty about going off into the woods and leaving his younger brother home alone on a day when his mother had to work in the mines, but to his sixteen-year-old self, any extra time with Bryony was worth it. He could hardly remember the last time they'd had more than a few minutes with each other, and today was an opportunity he didn't want to give up. She was turning seventeen that day, and her mother had shooed her out of the house, told her that she was to have fun and not come back until nightfall. Haymitch, of course, had been more than happy to oblige._

 _It had been dawn when they set out into the forest, and by mid-morning, they had reached the lake. "Think it's warm enough to swim?" she asked._

 _"Probably not yet." There was a bit of a chill in the air, but it should let up by early afternoon. "What do you want to do until then?" He'd washed the quilt from his bed and brought it along; fingers crossed, he'd be lucky enough to need it._

 _She looked around. "Let's go over to the far shore. I haven't been there before."_

 _Not the outcome he'd been hoping for, but he's never been over there either, and she has gotten him curious. Hand in hand, they go to the other side, where, around the bases of the trees, they find flowers growing. A few of the blooms are the small, white blossoms he knows are strawberries, and he's seen many of the others before, but Haymitch has never had much use for flowers that don't have a practical purpose. Until today, that is. Now, picking a particularly pretty bloom and handing it to Bryony wins him a smile, and that's enough to keep him picking until she has a full bouquet. "I think it'll be warm enough to swim now," she'd said once she couldn't hold anymore. He would have held them if she'd asked, of course he would have._

 _Haymitch followed her to the water, waiting for her to get in first, not sure how much he should wear into the lake. "Stop being so jittery about everything, Haymitch. Just wear what you feel comfortable in." She stripped down to her underwear and ran into the water. He must have looked so stupid, standing there slack-jawed, but he couldn't help it that he'd never seen her that close to naked before. "Get in here. You look like a fish."_

 _He'd waded in completely clothed, not thinking about how uncomfortable it would be to walk home in his soaked clothing. She splashed him, and he splashed her back, and she looked so beautiful with her clothes sticking against her skin, and… He didn't remember how it happened, but there they were, finally putting to good use the blanket he'd brought for them, and it wasn't perfect, but it sure as hell didn't scare him away from sex forever, so he'd call that a success._

 _She snuggled a little closer to him, her skin still a bit damp from their earlier swim. "I don't want today to end," she whispered._

 _"But then it'll never be tomorrow."_

 _Bryony rolled her eyes at him. "That's not the point, and you know it."_

 _He grabbed one of the flowers from the bouquet they had gathered earlier. "Here, keep this, and you'll always have a piece of today to keep with you."_

 _"You're a bleeding heart if there ever was one, Abernathy." She pushed away his hand. "You keep it. I know you will, because you're a romantic, even if you'll never admit it."_

 _"No, I'm not."_

 _"Yeah, you are, and stop arguing. We both know I'm right."_

He's not a romantic, and he never will be, but he still sets the flower aside. After all, there's no point in carrying it downstairs to throw away, and it does add a certain something to the room.


	7. Bereavement

_Bereavement - the period of grief and mourning after a death._

Damn it, where's his name? It's not under O like it should be – Oban, Oberon, O'Call, then straight on to O'Donnell, but maybe there was some kind of administrative error and they filed him incorrectly. Yeah, that has to be it. Johanna vows to give them hell for that later, but for now, she just needs to find when Finnick is coming back to Thirteen. The offices say that they have posted the names of all the survivors and when they'll be returning, but some incompetent must have gotten Finnick's file. That's the only set of circumstances she'll even consider.

Johanna could probably walk around the crowd, but instead, she elbows her way through the mess of bodies on her way back to Finnick and Annie's cell, er, quarters. Maybe Annie's heard something.

She stops when she hears a male voice coming from inside the apartment. Maybe it's Finnick? Johanna doesn't have any time for other people's sense of privacy, so she enters the key code that Odair wasn't smart enough to hide from her and steps right on in.

She wishes she hadn't. The instant she sees the two gray-clad Thirteen officers, the floor seems to drop out from underneath her. The woman turns to glance at her, but the man never stops talking. "We're sorry we had to bring such bad news, Mrs. Odair, and we hope you know how much District Thirteen appreciates your husband's sacrifice."

"Will you take care of her?" the woman – petite, military straight posture, Johanna thinks she recognizes her from somewhere, but she can't quite place her – asks, and she nods without thinking about it first. With that, she and her companion duck out of the apartment, leaving the two women alone.

When the door slides shut behind them, Johanna can no longer avoid looking at Annie. She's pretty sure the other woman hasn't realized she's there. Her eyes are clenched shut, and her hands are clapped over her ears, her fingers clawing at her hair and the scalp beneath. Fuck.

She promised to take care of Annie, didn't she? Johanna stumbles towards the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. She stands in front of the other woman for a minute, just trying to figure out how to even start going about this, before she gives up and sits down next to Annie. How does Finnick handle these things? He's always been better with people than her. No, _handled_ and _was._ He doesn't get present tense anymore. She looks at Annie, who's shaking now, and puts a hand on her back. "Hey, it'll be all right." _No it won't._

That doesn't get any response. Why did it have to be Finnick who died? At least for a Victor, Finnick had everything going for him – he'd managed to keep his family alive, he had a beautiful wife who he loved, he was handsome, he was smart, everybody had a little soft spot in their heart for him because he seemed so fucking perfect - and none of that mattered anymore. Not for the first time, she realized just how fucking unfair the universe really was.

She tries again. "Annie, I'm really sorry about everything." It doesn't seem like she's getting through, so Johanna puts her arms around the other woman. Everything about this feels wrong. _You're on Odair's bed with your arms around his wife, just like you've always wanted. Sure you're upset about him being dead?_

Nope, she couldn't do this. Comforting really isn't her style, and neither is accepting the world screwing over everyone she cares about. Johanna gets up and grabs Annie's hands. "Listen," she says, pulling them away from her ears. Finally, green eyes meet her own. "We're not going to take this, okay? We're going to make those fuckers pay for what they did." She doesn't have a plan, doesn't even know who should be paying for what they did to Finnick, but it feels good to say it.

"Yeah," Annie agrees, and Johanna's surprised she's actually getting through. Well, maybe not really getting through, since her eyes still seem kinda glazed and there's still a weird rigidity to her posture, but at least Annie realizes there's another person in the room now.

She falters, but she can't stop now, not when she's making progress. "We're gonna gouge their fucking eyes out and cut off their limbs one by one. No, scratch that. First, we'll cut off their fingers and toes, stuff 'em down their throats while they scream. Then, we'll move on to their arms and legs, cause they don't deserve anything better." She keeps running her mouth, coming up with the most violent things she can think of, and she's right, they do deserve anything and everything she can imagine. Annie listens sometimes, others wandering back into her mind, and Johanna wonders who she's really doing this for.

She decides it doesn't really matter. If she can't actually watch them burn for stealing Finnick away from them, she can at least dream of it.


	8. Factor

_Factor: a circumstance, fact, or influence that contributes to a result or outcome._

* * *

She'd tried rationalizing. _He's tall, blond, muscular … everything a girl could ask for. He's smart too. Of course you have a little crush - who wouldn't?_ It didn't work. Love had to be the least logical concept she'd ever encountered, for her heart wouldn't listen to reason.

Next, she'd attempted to ignore him. Whenever Cato tried to start a conversation, she would give only the shortest, most perfunctory answers. Other times, she pretended that she didn't notice him. But no matter how hard she tried, Clove found herself stealing glances at him during training and dreaming of him at night. Her love was stubborn, and it insisted that it not be forgotten.

If she could not control her heart, she had to minimize her losses and accept that they could never be together. Clove's trainers had always told her not to develop attachments to other tributes. Yes, if there was no possibility that she could win, it would be best for Two if she helped Cato succeed, but otherwise, she should focus on her own survival. It was a pity that she had disregarded those lessons, but, for Clove, love wasn't a choice.

The instant the cannon fired, Clove dashed to the Cornucopia. By the time she reached the throwing knives she'd spotted from her pedestal, Cato had already found a sword. Together, they cut down four tributes. Clove lost one knife to Everdeen, but there were plenty of others in the piles of supplies they had claimed, and it was easy to replace. All that mattered was that both she and Cato were still alive. She wanted to throw her arms around him in a tight embrace, but she refrained. Clove suspected that her love shone in her eyes anyway. Though she tried, her love would not be contained.

They screamed together as they ran from the tracker jackers, swatting the insects away. Eventually, they collapsed together, each covered in hideous sores. Cato swore to kill Everdeen, and Clove hoped that he could fulfill his promise. She couldn't stand the pain that woman had put Cato through, and she wanted her to die. At its heart, her love was cruel, just like her.

When a voice rang through the Arena with news that two tributes could live, Clove couldn't contain her joy. Finally, the two of them had a chance. Only a few tributes still lived, and they'd be easily dispatched. Her dreams were just a few stab wounds away from coming true. For the first time, she allowed her love to be hopeful.

But dreams are a crystal palace: beautiful to live in, but they can splinter into a trillion pieces in an instant, cutting you as they shatter. An invitation to a feast had sounded so promising, and killing Everdeen could only make it better. She made the foolish mistake of toying with her prey, though, and paid dearly for her misstep. As her skull cracked, Clove could think only of Cato, and how he might still make it out alive. Though she was far from kind, her love, in the end, was selfless.


	9. Drift

**A/N:** Trigger warning for suggestions of rape.

* * *

 _Drift_ – to be carried slowly by a current of air or water. Alternately, to be blown into heaps by wind (especially of leaves or snow).

* * *

It tastes like fire and burns all the way down. Finnick makes a mental note to not allow Johanna to order for him again, but he knows that like his mind, the thought will soon be gone. Still, he finished the glass. No reason to let good liquor (and it is good, Jo doesn't drink the cheap shit Haymitch and Chaff like) go to waste.

He barely stops himself from jumping when something touches his shoulder. Finnick flexes instead (lets the energy out) and the woman giggles, nuzzling in a little closer. She's cute, he discovers on further inspection. Around his age, pink hair grown out just far enough that he can see golden-blonde roots, and doll-like blue eyes that have just enough grey in them that he would bet they're her natural color. If tonight was business rather than pleasure (though pleasure is his business, so he's not always sure where the distinction lays), he might try to pull her. (Try? Succeed. There's precisely one area where Finnick Odair never fails.)

Damn it, they never mention that a girl on each arm means you can't hold a drink. Johanna must be able to read his mind (he really hopes she didn't hear him refer to her as 'girl'), because she slips out from underneath and puts a cool glass of something in his hand. It's pink and smells more like cherry-flavored candy than any actual fruit (though isn't everything here more artificial than it is back home?), but it's tasty and it gets you drunk without tasting like alcohol, and he doesn't really care much beyond that.

"So, how long are you back in the Capitol for?"

"I've got a few weeks until I head home. How about you, sweetheart? Headed back to Four with me?"

Her eyes widen even further at that, and Finnick immediately feels terrible about it. (If she's really hurt, it's her own fault. She's an adult and should know better than to trust anything that he says.) Pink Hair (she probably told him her name when she sat down, but aren't they all the same?) laughs, far more genuine than her earlier giggles. "Bet you can't wait to get back. It's got to be nice to escape the cold this time of year."

She can't know just how much. Sometimes, when he meets one of them who seems almost decent, he wishes that there was a little switch on his back that could allow him to go from charming to sincere in an instant. "But the cold makes snuggling up at the end of the night feel even warmer." That one wasn't even good. He hears Johanna snort behind him.

"I'm sure." She shifts, allowing her breast to caress his bare chest in a way her hands could not. "So, have any plans for snuggling up tonight?"

"Yeah, he does. Fuck off." Trust Jo to fight against the tide of regular conversation.

He shrugs apologetically at Pink Hair when she looks to him for confirmation. "Oh, all right then." (No drama? He's really starting to like this girl.) She grabs a pen out of bag and clicks it. "Can I give you my number?"

Finnick nods, and she scooches Johanna (who would've thought Johanna could be scooched away?) out of her way and pulls his arm towards her. In bubblegum-pink ink that matches her hair perfectly (though he's never been good with color, so perhaps he shouldn't be judging that), she neatly prints her number onto his upper arm, adding a kiss (and matching lipstick stain) just below for good measure. (He'll be scrubbing at that for a good twenty minutes before it comes off. Finnick considers himself an expert on the wear time of high-end lipstick formulas.)

"Scram." Nice of her to wait until Pink Hair was finished. Johanna waited until the other woman was out of sight to glare at him. "The fuck were you doing?"

He shrugs.

"Do you ever think? And where'd your shirt go?"

Best to leave the first question unanswered. "It was hot in here." (And his stylist had hinted that he was really proud of the golden temporary tattoos he'd placed on Finnick's chest, and if he would really like to help a guy out, maybe he could show a few people and let them know where they came from. Why not be a sport about it?)

"Go too far above and beyond, and they're gonna think you like this, Odair." She's going to get them into trouble, saying things like that.

"You aren't loving every minute of this?"

She mutters something under her breath that is probably best left unheard. In any case, the music is loud enough around here that it's hard to make out normal conversation, so he doubts it was really meant for him. Johanna tugs him up. "I'm getting you the fuck out of here before you do something stupid."

Panic rises in his chest. "Jo, don't." She continues to pull at him anyway. He's bigger than her, and he should be able to stop her, but so much of him doesn't want to. (Why stand when you can sit? Why sit when you could lie down? Why lie down when dying is so much easier?) No, there's always a better strategy. "Come on, Jo, let's not get ahead of ourselves. I'm not going anywhere, and I could use another drink." Cool, calm, coy, not scared, everything he should be. A wink is the cherry on top. "And," he adds, dropping his voice a couple notes, causing those around them to lean in just a bit (because prying is rude, but a bit of naughty makes everything more fun), "I see someone who I think we could both have some fun with."

He looks towards another man, tall, handsome, a face that belongs on the big screen. Jo looks between Finnick and the stranger (though really, everyone in Panem knows this face, you can't escape the constant commercials that proclaim Septimus Nament as the greatest actor of our generation) before heading back in, deeper into the club than they had gone earlier. He won't make it easy on them, Finnick's certain, but isn't the chase the best part of the hunt?

He won't fail, and Johanna is equally determined. Words, drinks, oh god, he practically purrs when Sept (he's been given permission to call him that, because after all, they are going to be very close soon) finally puts his hand on him. It's Johanna's kiss that gets the man out of the club (seduction is a team sport, but that doesn't mean he didn't want to score the winning goal) and towards the taxi they're paying far too much to wait for them (what's the use of winnings if you don't spend them?).

Outside, the snow is falling, and the older man's arm around his shoulders is not enough to stop Finnick from shivering. His chest is a mess of goose bumps (but it's a beautiful mess – he is the Golden Boy, and those tattoos do add a certain something extra). Once they're inside the cab, Finnick snuggles a little closer, trying to be worth every credit the man must have paid for the extra publicity. Pulling two Victors at once must come with quite the price tag.

The mask can never slip off. As a hand slides from his knee to his thigh and then further still, Finnick moans and opens his legs to give him better access, a performance that should earn him every nomination those dull award shows have to offer. Septimus smiles. (The chase may be the best part of the hunt, but knowing your prey has nowhere to run makes it all the better.)


	10. Connect

_Connect – to join together so as to provide access and communication. Alternately, to form a relationship or feel an affinity._

That button was the one that made the screen blue, and that one was the one he had to push to make the greenlight come on. As far as he was concerned, that's all you really had to know about computers. That and how much space they took up on your dining room table, gathering dust like all the other stupid gadgets Beetee had talked him into buying over the years.

Haymitch waited while the little green light flickered. Was it supposed to do that? He still had the manual somewhere – probably in the boxes of stuff in the bedroom, now that he thought about it - but he didn't want to go hunting for it. Okay, there it went. Yeah, he could handle this.

Turned out that Beetee had set up the passwords and stuff all nice and easy for him. Good man. Didn't mean he had any idea how to use any of it, but that was helpful.

All right, then. That was good enough progress for today. Haymitch didn't really want to power the damn thing off – it'd be a pain in the ass to get it up and running again - so he left it on as he went about his daily routine. Which mostly consisted of putting out some food for the geese and drinking himself into a stupor, but the consistency had to count for something. Why have a clock when you could just judge the time by how you drunk you felt? And really, if you're doing a good enough job of it, eventually, time isn't really a concern.

Haymitch must have been well past that point the night before, if the headache was any indication. Fuck, that blue light wasn't making it any better. The noise he made as he pawed at the screen, trying to get it to turn off without breaking the damn thing – though he wouldn't mind too much about it at this point, not when it might as well be drilling a hole between his eyes – didn't sound human, even to his own ears. "Damn it, Beetee," he swore. "How do I get this fucking –"

Speak of the devil. A gray blip showed up in the corner, and it sure seemed like it was oscillating in size, but he couldn't really trust his senses on that one, because the entire world was tipping back and forth for him right now. He grabbed for the mouse and clicked on it. "This'd better be good," he mumbled to nobody in particular.

"Haymitch? I didn't catch that." He nearly fell out of his chair when a giant face took over the screen, staring out towards him. Shoulda been expecting that one.

"Holding onto my every word again, Latier?"

"I hadn't heard from you in a long time. I'm glad to see you got your computer set up."

"Yeah, some stuff got in the way for a while, but now I've got 'er up and running." Damn, his head hurts. Any water nearby? That usually helped. He did a quick scan of the room. Of course not. That'd be just too much to as this morning, wouldn't it?

"Are you feeling all right, Haymitch?"

"Just peachy," he practically growled back. No reason to take it out on Beetee; just because he wasn't taking care of his problems the way everybody else seemed to be able to take care of theirs was no real excuse.

But Beetee had always been the easy target who never bit back. "Sorry to hear that, Haymitch. Should I get ahold of you some other time? I'd like to hear what you all have been up to."

"If that's what you want." He could sound as put-upon as he pleased, but that didn't mean he wasn't looking forward to it. Now, for some water and some pain relief. Hair of the dog made for the best hangover cure.

* * *

Damn, the shit Beetee sent him was weird. Pictures of wiring and tubing and shit he couldn't identify (that the other man probably thought he could understand), little videos of his cat Schrodinger in a box (that Beetee seemed to think were some kind of joke that Haymitch should get), and stories about his work (none of which he could even begin to understand). Somehow, he thought he could see a trend developing. Still, he replied, with pictures of Katniss and Peeta's children and images of pretty flowers he's stumbled (often literally) across on his daily walks. But geese and wires and memories of good things past don't hurt like the deep stuff, and Haymitch can't consider that anything but a positive. And so the computer sees nothing but happiness and the gems of growing old in a world that is only getting brighter, and he wouldn't wish it any other way.


	11. Caffeine

_Caffeine - a crystalline compound that is found especially in tea and coffee plants and is a stimulant of the central nervous system._

When the meeting adjourned, Finnick grabbed her hand under the table, stopping her from getting up as the others filed out. Gale glared at Finnick as he passed the two of them, and a part of her wanted to comfort her old friend that there wasn't anything going on between the two of them. A lot bigger part wanted to slap him for acting like he owned her, so she settled for pretending not to notice.

Once everyone else was gone, Finnick pulled another coffee cup from under the table. Katniss immediately reached for it, as her own cup had disappeared much too quickly, but he pulled it away at the last second. "See something you like, Everdeen?"

That smirk drove her crazy, and not in the way it worked on most people. She gave him a death glare and reached for it again. Still, he kept it away from her. "No, this is for Johanna."

"Then why are you tempting me with it?"

"You now, you could at least try to make friends with your new roommate. It wouldn't hurt either of you."

"Fine, I'll be your delivery girl and give it to her." She held out her hand, and he finally handed it over. "See you tomorrow?"

"Of course. Say hi to her for me." With that, it was time to go. Katniss was careful to not allow even a drop to spill – no easy feat, considering that she had to keep the stolen cup hidden by pulling her shirt sleeve over it. Not the most natural way to walk, but she wouldn't let Finnick get into trouble for stealing coffee. Stupid crimes seemed to be the ones they cared about most here.

Katniss opened the door to find a scene that had become very familiar over the past couple weeks. Johanna sat in the same position she took up most nights: on the bed, cross-legged, and looking down at her hands. "Hey," Katniss said as she stepped into the room. "I've got something for you." She held out the cup of coffee, and Johanna sat there, studying the gift. "It's coffee."

At that, Johanna snatched the cup away. "You're welcome," Katniss mumbled as she collapsed backwards onto her bed. It felt like its designer had done everything in their power to make it as uncomfortable as it could be without people openly complaining, but then again, that went for most things in Thirteen. Even with the caffeine, she could happily sleep for a couple days, and by then maybe they'd have something useful for her to do. Katniss' eyes began to drift shut, but at the sputtering and choking, they flew open again.

Johanna coughed and choked, and she felt the spray of a few drops of coffee-spit mixture. Katniss scrambled up, ready to help however she could, but Johanna pushed her away when she got too close. "Trying to poison me, Everdeen?" Her face was red, and she couldn't get through the sentence without coughing, but somehow, it still sounded threatening.

This was not what she'd signed up for when she offered to room with Johanna. "Don't give me that. It was Finnick who fixed it." She went back to her bed, but didn't dare take her eyes off Johanna. She could still remember the other woman pinning her down, cutting open her arm and, she was certain at the time, leaving her to bleed out, not even bothering to finish her off cleanly.

"That explains it. Odair doesn't like coffee. Odair likes to wet his sugar with coffee and pretend like he's a big boy while he drinks it." Johanna took another sip, wrinkling her nose at the offending liquid.

"If you hate it that much, I'd be happy to finish it off for you." Making it sound like killing the coffee seemed like the best way to get Johanna to agree, and now that she thought about it, she really would like some more.

She shook her head. "Nah, it was just that I was expecting coffee, not sugary water."

"You'll have to give Finnick hell for it next time you see him."

That smile, the wolfish one that showed too many teeth to really be happy, could only come from the Johanna she remembered meeting before the Games. "Oh, I'm going to." They fell into a content silence after that, one that was disturbed only by Johanna's occasional sip. The coffee couldn't have been more than lukewarm by that point, but Johanna seemed determined to make it last. Eventually, her thoughts wandered away, to training tomorrow and Peeta, still held in the hospital ward where no one would allow her to go, and –

"You're not half-bad, Everdeen."

The words startled her from her daydreams. "What?"

"I'm not going to say it again."


	12. Guide

_Guide – a person who advises or shows the way to others. Alternately, to show or indicate the way to someone._

I.

This place doesn't look familiar, not even a little bit. Gloss cranes his head back as far as it can go, but he still can't see the tip-tops of the trees. Grandma once told him that the redwoods had grown here before there was a District One, maybe before there was such a thing as time. All he knows is that the forest is very big, and he is very small in comparison, and that he's starting to think that maybe he doesn't want to be in training anymore. If this is their first expedition beyond the electric fence unaccompanied, he doesn't want to know how scary the other ones will be.

"Come on, we need to keep moving." Cashmere grabs his hand and pulls him along with her. Mom did say to stay close to his older sister so he doesn't get lost, and so Gloss doesn't complain, even if she is being a little bossy.

"You know how to get home?"

"Yeah," she answers, and he's relieved, but the trees she's leading him towards don't look any more familiar than the others, and he can't see footprints or crushed leaves anywhere that announce they've been here before. Still, he follows. As long as they stay together, he's certain it'll be all right.

II.

Each morning, he hears the soft melody of a parachute landing next to him. Most days, it is nothing but a remnant of last night's dream that wakefulness has not yet shooed away, but this morning, he opens his eyes to find a gleaming silver canister on the ground next to him. The smile that spreads across his face when he finds what hides inside does not need to be faked for the cameras. For the salve, the one that must be so expensive because it soothes the stinging and stops the burning he could feel under the infected cut, it is easy to be grateful. They're nasty, the maces the Capitol's supplied them with this year, not at all what he'd usually choose. They usually bruise more than cut, and while he's certainly got a hell of a purple-black ring on his side to show for his encounter with the Ten boy, Gloss has also learned that the spikes, if they get you just right, can hurt far worse.

"Thanks, Cash," he says as he pulls up his shirt to apply the ointment, not quite able to keep in a moan as it begins to soothe the tender skin.

He allows himself to bask in the relief for only an instant before he pushes himself up. He's not going to win if he doesn't keep moving. With what she must have gone through to secure him the ointment, he least he can do is make sure not to lose.

III.

She doesn't need his protection; she's strong and capable and a Victor on her own, thank you, but he shields her from the others as they walk anyway. He wants to believe that they can trust Brutus and Enobaria, but the Career Pack can only last for so long. By his count, they're down to the four of them and seven others. It can't be long now, for the utility of killing as many of them as they can as quickly as possible has replaced entertainment this year.

Cashmere pushes him away every once in a while, and he's not sure if it's playful or a request for a bit more space. But she has never been quiet about her wants, and she never says anything, even when he moves in a bit closer. He doesn't want space. It's stupid and juvenile, he knows, but as long as she's close by, he doesn't' feel nearly as lost.


	13. Develop

_Develop - grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate._

He settled against the wall of the Justice Building to examine the new Peacekeepers. From what he could tell, there were two of them. One was dark-haired and probably in his late twenties, and the other was a redheaded man not much older than him. Neither seemed too bad or all that good, and he'd leave it at that. Figure out if they were those hardliners who didn't want to buy the strawberries, rabbits, and squirrels from beyond the fence and go from there.

It didn't seem any different from any other time new Peacekeepers came. Gale should've known better.

.

"Redheaded men are supposed to be the most virile." If Katniss wasn't here, he would have wiped that stupid smirk off Darius' face in an instant. Really, if he thought Katniss'd be impressed by it, he'd have done it anyway.

Darius' flirting wouldn't have been so annoying if it didn't seem to be working. She'd deny it, he knew she would, but even if Katniss rolled her eyes and made Darius pay full price, she softened her usual roughness around him.

He could learn a few tricks from the Peacekeeper. Or he could glare and play petulant child. Either worked.

.

The first strike was excruciating, the second beyond unbearable. He heard the man clear the whip of his blood and ready for a third strike, but before the whip could again lick his back, Gale heard a man's voice. "Stop!"

He knew that voice, knew that it had the power to make this torture end, but even as he sinks forward with relief, he heard a _crack_ behind him, and then a _thud_ , and that was all before the next lash hit just above his right shoulder.

Gale heard only his own screams as the unconscious man was carried away.

.

Katniss had told him what happened. At first, he could almost accept it. That was before he met Pollux. The man had the same red hair, the same blue eyes, and the same scars where a tongue should have been. Stockier and several years older than Darius was ever allowed to get as well, but he didn't want to think about that.

Under Beetee's watchful eye, Gale raised his new crossbow and aimed it straight for the target's heart. There were so many who deserved vengeance, but right now, he could think of only one.

Aim, release, and _boom._ Perfect.


	14. Jotunheim

_Jotunheim_ \- _the outer world, or realm of giants._

"Hello?" He doesn't mind that Cashmere has taken to answering the phone for him. It's usually for her anyway, now that people have learned that if she's not home, she's probably over at his place. Better yet, it means that he doesn't have to talk to them, not even for that few seconds it takes them to ask if Cashmere is over.

"Gloss? It's for you."

That's different. Still, he gets up and takes the phone. "Hey." If he sounds happy about hearing from whoever this is, the more likely they are to call him again. Minimizing risk is generally a good strategy.

"You sound happy this morning."

"Hi, Enobaria. Good to hear from you." He keeps his voice flat, more because it'll annoy her than anything else. The Two Victors are too tightly-wound anyway, and from here, she can't get him. Hopefully. "So, how go things in Two?"

"This isn't a personal call."

He rolls his eyes – juvenile, he knows, but hardly unwarranted - and waits for her to continue. At least with Enobaria, it's probably something important. In Two, they don't have time for trivialities. Their quarries, where men harvest full layers of the earth, their snow-capped mountains, their military bases that are so often rumored that they must be real, it seems as far from One as it could be. If they were tools, One would be a delicate pair of tweezers, and Two would be a hammer. And yet they had both produced more Victors than any of the other districts. Funny how those things work.

"Gloss." At the sound of her voice, his attention snaps back to the conversation. The land of giants and dragons – it's all too easy to imagine such creatures in that place, even if he knows they can't be real – has no need for him now. And in any case, it's bad form to allow one's mind to wander in front of the competition, for that's what they really are, even if during this stage they have to play nicely. "Have you been listening?"

No, of course he hasn't. "You cut out there for a minute. Mind repeating that?" She'll know, she always knows, but it's good enough.

And as they talk of hypothetical children that might become Victors in a possible Arena, that land no longer seems so far away.


	15. Superstition

_Superstition - a widely held but unjustified belief in supernatural causation leading to certain consequences of an action or event, or a practice based on such a belief._

Katniss had to stay home today. She didn't want to, but Mommy said she'd make herself more sick if she went out in the cold. Katniss didn't have enough of a voice left to argue back very well. And since Mommy needed to spend her time at home taking care of Katniss, Prim got to go with Daddy into the forest.

Now, she understood why Katniss wanted to come. It smelled nicer out here than it did inside the fence, clean and sweet, and though she couldn't spot any birds, their songs drifted down from the treetops. Gone was the grey-black dusting of coal that laid over District Twelve.

A warm hand touched her shoulder. "I know it's beautiful, Prim, but we need to keep going," her father said, and she took his hand and walked with him deeper into the trees. "Atta girl. I promise there'll be some time to look around and explore once we've got our berries."

"We're not gonna hunt today?"

He shook his head. "Not today."

"Why?"

"I don't think you'd like all the thing that go into hunting."

"Oh, okay." Katniss had told her about what they did to the animals when Mommy and Daddy weren't listening, and he was right. "Where are the berries at?"

"Just a little while further. They're in the clearing over this way." He smiled down at her. "How you liking it out here so far?"

"I like it a lot. Do I have to go home?" She made her eyes go as wide as they could. That usually worked on Daddy.

Not today, though. "I think you might want to go back home to sleep. The ground gets awful cold at night," he laughed. "Just past this tree here."

Oh, wow, she didn't know there were so many berry bushes in the forest. Prim thought that Katniss and Daddy always picked all the ones they could find, but there were enough here for a hundred families. She started to run towards them, but Daddy stopped her by grabbing her arm. She looked up at him, the question obvious in her face. "We need to go around."

"Why?"

"Do you see the circle?" He pointed to the ground, and now that she looked at it, she could see a ring of dead grass surrounded by mushroom caps. "We call those faerie circles, and we're careful not to go inside or touch them."

She remembered a few stories of faeries, the little winged creatures that caused mischief wherever they went, but that didn't explain it. "Why can't we touch them?"

"It's just a legend."

"So they're not real." That's what Mommy had said when Prim asked her, anyway.

He nodded. "That's right. But even though they're not real, we can't prove they aren't, and in the legends, bad things happen to people who go into their rings. There's no reason to risk it." He took Prim by the hand again and guided her around the circle towards the berry bushes. Once they were around, she broke off, running to the bushes and tearing the berries from their stems. At first, she didn't bother with a pail, instead stuffing the sweet red berries into her mouth by the handful. Juice dribbled down her chin, and Mommy wouldn't be happy when she saw the stain down the front of her dress, but she wasn't worried about that right now. Eventually, though, Daddy said she should bring some home to have later, so she set to work filling up her bucket. The thrill of seeing the berries gone, her thoughts returned to the ring of mushrooms she could see beyond the bushes.

"What happens if you go into the faerie ring?"

"They cause mischief for you."

"Isn't that what they do anyway?"

Her father shook his head. "Ah well, I suppose you're old enough to know. Promise you won't tell your mother what I tell you?" She nodded, serious. "All right, then." He was quiet for a moment, thinking. "The faeries are very protective of their little rings, because it's where they dance. When people come into them, they'll do all sorts of bad thing to 'em. The legends say they're doomed to die at an early age, and bad things happen all around them. But don't you worry. They aren't real."

"But I shouldn't go into the rings just in case."

"Smart girl."

…

And being a smart girl, she remembered, really she did. But accidents are prone to happen, and the excitement of bringing home a full pail of berries to Mommy and Katniss would cause any little girl to not look where she was running as she hurried home. But there were Daddy's reassurances that everything would be fine, that the faeries weren't real and look, nothing bad has happened yet. Must be just a legend after all.

She almost forgot about it.

What happened in the mines almost certainly wasn't her fault. But she couldn't prove that it wasn't.


	16. Set Partition

A set partition of a set **S** is a set of disjoint subsets of **S** whose union is **S**.

* * *

The smart thing to do right now is give up. She's smart, supposedly, or at least the report cards in school and the teacher's notes home seem to suggest that, but she's still up, trying to puzzle it out. And it doesn't make any sense, not that anything does these days. In the Arena, there was in and out, alive and dead, but here, those dichotomies have lost their meaning. Those neat partitions Wiress has created of her life no longer work when she feels like she's in the Arena so long after she got out, when she can't help but feel that she lost when the crown and the ceremony said she won.

Fit the theory to the facts, not the facts to the theory. She's given up on that particular bit of wisdom. There are only so many stories to be told, and it's the Pigeonhole Principle in action to find that if there are _n_ stories and greater than _n_. If the mouse runs up and down the clock twice or the clock sings _ding-dong-ding_ rather than _dong-ding-dong,_ can it really be counted as something new? But the writers permute them into this, that, and the other thing, and they repackage them in such a way that they can lie and act as though they've made something new. She can't blame them. It's the Pigeonhole Principle in action to find that if there are _n_ possible stories and greater than _n_ people telling them, at least two people must be telling the same story.

Figuring out which story they're acting out now is difficult. She has the pieces laid before her, but like tangrams, though she knows there's a way they fit together, they don't quite want to glide together into a perfect rectangle. He sat by her side during their long hours in the lab, sometimes close enough that their shoulders occasionally brushed against each other's, and more and more often, he steered their conversations away from the important things, the science, the discoveries, and towards the details he had no real reason to care about. Her family and how she passed the little time she spent outside the lab should be of no importance, but to him, they were.

Perhaps he expects the same from her. Reciprocity, she has come to understand, is one of the defining characteristics of most human interactions. When given an input, she is expected to provide and output. 'Hello, how are you?' maps to 'I'm fine, and you?' That's fine. She can understand functions.

When faced with a problem she can't solve, her first instinct is to gather more data. The opportunity presents itself when Beetee sits himself down next to her the next day. Their lab extends ten meters in every direction from where she sits in the center. He doesn't need to be here, but perhaps it's an invitation. Hypotheses can't move on until they're tested, and so she reaches for his hand and smiles. He squeezes back and returns the smile, and after the embrace ends, he shifts his chair even closer towards hers. Wiress takes careful note of his reaction and files it away for later consideration as she returns to the work at hand.

* * *

 **A/N:** Happy Pi Day! I couldn't help myself.


	17. Pulmonary Vein

_Pulmonary Vein_ \- a vein carrying oxygenated blood from the lungs to the left atrium of the heart.

* * *

Beetee wakes to a soft weight on his chest. "Is it still beating?" he whispers.

He feels Wiress' nod. "Ninety-three." It's been years since this started, and he's still amazed that she can measure it so precisely without a watch to count the seconds.

"Good." It's not really. Beetee has been too lax these last few months with his exercise, allowing aching knees and an overhaul of the Capitol's communications network to put an end to his daily jogs. Tomorrow, he'll force himself to go on a long walk. Maybe he can convince Wiress to come along with him.

"You think it's too high." Their bedroom is dark, but he can picture her expression perfectly, brown eyes wide, questioning. Wiress treats the doctor's words as gospel. When she hears that Beetee needs to keep his resting heart rate between sixty and one hundred beats per minute, those numbers become the boundaries on her mental while loop. No matter how close to the edge the number lands, if it doesn't cross those thresholds, they're both fine.

"I'll be all right. Don't worry about me." He plays with her hair as she goes silent, nuzzling closer against his chest.

"Ninety-one."

* * *

Dad had been forty-two when he had his first heart attack. On paper, it wasn't surprising. Overweight, sedentary, family history, Radal Latier checked every box. Dad understood his risks, and if the attack fazed him at all, he didn't show it. When he started having chest pains at his desk, he calmly asked his assistant to call for an ambulance as he chewed three aspirin tablets.

His nine-year-old son was shaken to the core. Almost forty years later, Beetee still remembered how pale Dad had been when he came out of surgery, still startled awake with the image of his father, small and defeated, burning into his skull. It did not matter that Radal recovered quickly, that he was back to work within hours, finishing his blueprints from his hospital bed. Days without incident morphed into weeks, months, years. He continued to get up early and come home late, the only change to his routine the little blue pill he now downed with morning coffee.

The second killed him. The coroner said Radal died in his sleep, that it was a peaceful death, but that meant nothing.

* * *

Beetee takes an anticoagulant every morning. These days, it comes in an even tinier blue pill, small enough to swallow without water, but since coffee's a part of his routine anyway, it doesn't matter. He tries to take a walk at noon, and if he absolutely must stay cooped up in his office all day, he sets a timer to remind him to stretch every half hour. It's just common sense. After a certain age, people have to start taking better care of themselves, and for Beetee, diet, exercise, and medication are a necessary part of that.

He believes that lie until the sun goes down. Common sense doesn't drive him to down four cherry-flavored antacids every night so he doesn't write off a heart attack as indigestion. It doesn't make him catalog every ache and pain every time he wakes up during the night.

Wiress doesn't notice other people, but this cannot escape her attention. The week before his fiftieth birthday, she starts a new project. It's tiny, small enough that she watches through a microscope as the nanoprinter works on the parts. Beetee helps her build models of the cardiovascular system to begin the tens of thousands of hours of trials before they dare implant the blockage-clearing nanobot into any human, even one of themselves.

It's warm this time of year, but he always wears a shirt to bed. Unless she's the one who initiates it, the feeling of skin on skin twists Wiress' thoughts into a meaningless jumble of garbled code. But as has happened so often these last few months, he wakes to find his pajama shirt undone and Wiress' ear over his heart.

"Eight-nine," she whispers, and kisses his chest. "Good."

* * *

 **A/N:** Based on the prompt _pulmonary vein_ received on Tumblr from turtledoves. Because I do still fill Tumblr prompts. I'm just terrible about getting to them in any kind of timely matter.


	18. Pointillism

_Pointillism:_ _a technique of neo-impressionist painting using tiny dots of various pure colors, which become blended in the viewer's eye_ _._

The bell chimes. Her hair is longer now, and her eyes are older. She reads the sign above the counter. He reads the story of the years in the lines of her forehead.

She sees him looking and smiles. He knows why she came.

The boys' laughter filters in from outside. His wife has errands to run this afternoon.

Her hand is warm around his. The stairs creak as they climb, but the carpet on the bedroom floor muffles any noise.

Her hair shines golden against the pillow, and her lips are red and shining with his kisses. Her nails leave crescent indents over his shoulders and back. The bedframe creaks beneath them, and he whispers promises against her ear.

She doesn't look at him when they're finished. The stairs creak less under only her weight. The sheets smell like her.

Four years pass.

The girl's eyes are a deep blue, the shade he sees in the mirror. Her toddler hands leave smudges on the glass as she peers into the bakery. His youngest frosts fresh-baked cookies with birds. Her gaze lingers on the pink one. He grabs it and walks outside.

Her smile is brilliant. She offers him a bite, and tears burn in the corner of his eye. He wipes the crumbs off her shirt and pats her head.

The bell rings at his return. His son looks up from his work and frowns. He watches the girl as she begins her walk home.


End file.
